http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30232-the-chevron-tapes-secret-videos-reveal-company-hid-pollution-in-ecuador
[videos in on-line article]
The Chevron Tapes: Secret Videos Reveal Company Hid Pollution in Ecuador
Wednesday, 15 April 2015 00:00 By Kevin Koenig, Amazon Watch | Report
and Videos
We work for truth, justice and environmental sanity every day. We keep
on with the hope that there will be a moment when the evil and corrupt
acts that politicians and big business carry out that harm the planet,
violate human rights and affect the health of our communities will see
the light of day. Today is one of those historic moments.
In 2011, a mysterious package arrived at our D.C. office. Beat up,
rumpled and with no return address, a staffer avoided opening it fearing
it may have been a bomb. We could never have guessed that the contents
would instead turn out to be a smoking gun in one of the largest and
longest-running environmental cases in the world.
In the tradition of whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg, whose Pentagon
Papers exposed the US secret war in Southeast Asia; Jeffrey Wigand,
whose information on big tobacco's use of addictive ingredients exposed
and transformed the industry; and Sherron Watkins, whose revelations on
Enron's pyramid-scheme accounting led to the collapse of the company and
jail time for executives, we are proud to share The Chevron Tapes.
In that battered package were dozens of DVDs labeled "pre-inspections",
with dates and locations we had come to know all too well – Shushufindi,
Sacha, Lago Agrio – former Chevron well sites in the rainforest. Inside
was a handwritten note:
"I hope this is useful for you in the trial against Texaco/Chevron!"
Signed, "A friend from Chevron."
A trap? A whistleblower? We didn't know, and began to review the videos.
What we found will shock you. Because Chevron has finally been proven in
its own videos not only to have lied about contamination, but to have
hidden evidence it knew would cost lives.
It rolls like this: Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001, had just
been found guilty of one of the worst environmental disasters on the
planet in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest. Ordered to pay $9.5 billion to
clean up their contamination, Chevron instead fled the country and
actually went on to sue the victims – communities – in the US for extortion.
During the trial against Chevron in Ecuador between 2003 - 2011, the
judge carried out dozens of inspections of former Chevron well sites,
where affected communities, the company, and the court all took soil and
water samples to test for contamination. The videos – shot by Chevron –
document the company and its consultants conducting pre-inspections of
the sites so they would know where to take "clean" samples on the day of
the inspection by the judge.
As you'll see in the footage, that task proved much harder than Chevron
had thought it would be. Employees and consultants are caught on tape
frustrated by their inability to find soil samples without oil, and then
mocking the contamination.
"Nice job Dave. Give you one simple task: Don't find petroleum."
"Who picked the spot Rene? Who told them where to drill, Rene?"
"Oh, so it's my fault? I'm the customer, I'm always right."
Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like: big oil caught on video –
their own video! – trying to hide contamination.
In the excerpts released, Chevron is seen finding its own extensive
contamination – in areas the company claimed to have cleaned up in 1998
– then pre-gaming the judicial inspections to defraud the court.
I was at many of the judicial inspections with our team from Amazon
Watch, and we witnessed numerous other Chevron efforts to fool the court
and throw the case. We watched Chevron take soil samples from illogical
places – upstream from waste pits, never down gradient from potential
contamination sources. We saw employees, consultants and security
intimidate indigenous and campesino witnesses who were coming face to
face for the first time with the people who poisoned them. We were there
when Chevron, staying at a local military base, colluded with its
hospitable hosts and produced a phony military report citing a "security
risk" that successfully canceled the first judicial inspection of a
major well site in the territory of the Cofán, an indigenous group that
bore the brunt of Texaco's arrival in the 1960s.
As the videos blatantly demonstrate, Chevron's effort to hide
contamination and get "clean samples" proved challenging. While Chevron
never submitted the test results from these "pre-inspections," its
samples from the actual inspections show stratospheric levels of
contamination, which ultimately led to the guilty verdict against the
company anyway.
Also on the tapes are interviews with local communities. Chevron
obviously searched to find people who either didn't have knowledge of
its toxic legacy, or who would put the blame on Ecuador's state oil
company Petroecuador – who took over Texaco's operations, crumbling
infrastructure, rusty pipelines and problems in 1993. As the videos
show, anyone living there recalls in vivid detail the way they were
treated by the company.
And while they did manage to find a few people who said they didn't
experience any problems, or that Petroecuador was worse, those people
were admittedly recent inhabitants at the time having only lived there
for six months. Some may have even been enticed by company claims that
its 1998 clean up made the areas safe for inhabiting.
The videos are a true treasure trove of Chevron misdeeds and corporate
malfeasance. And, ironically, Chevron itself proved their authenticity.
Amazon Watch turned over the tapes to the legal team representing the
affected indigenous and farmer communities. When the plaintiffs' lawyers
tried to use the videos in court to cross-examine a Chevron "scientist,"
the company objected.
A letter sent by Chevron's legal firm Gibson Dunn to counsel for the
communities states,
"These videos are Chevron's property, and are confidential
documents and/or protected litigation work product. Chevron demands that
you provide detailed information about how your firm acquired these
videos and your actions with respect to them... In addition to providing
this information, Chevron demands that you promptly return the
improperly obtained videos and all copies of them by sending them to my
attention at the above address."
Chevron is now free to view them on YouTube.
But it turns out that falsifying evidence is nothing new for Chevron and
Gibson Dunn. The firm is currently under scrutiny in London, where one
of its partners faces charges for submitting fraudulent evidence
implicating a man in a terrorist attack.
But the evidence shown in the videos is just one part of Chevron's
fraudulent effort to dub the Ecuador judge and sabotage the trial. In
fact, when you take this together with the rest of Chevron's tactics, it
becomes strikingly clear that the company set out to play dirty.
Given its difficulty in finding "clean samples", the company threw in
the towel and in some places just swapped dirty well site samples with
dirt from the roadside. Then it brought in "experts" to verify the
samples, but used a company "playbook" to hide the original source of
the samples.
And remember Chevron's two "concerned citizens" who allegedly uncovered
a plot to bribe the presiding judge? It turned out that one of the men
involved was a convicted felon, now on the lam in Peru. The other worked
for Chevron!
It all sounds very Erin Brockovich, or A Civil Action. But this is why
Chevron wanted the case tried in Ecuador – the company hoped desperately
that it would get away with fraudulent acts like this.
Perhaps the most astounding chapter of this whole story is that Chevron
filed a RICO case in NY against communities and their legal team,
accusing them of fraud and extortion. But even that is rapidly falling
apart for Chevron. New forensic evidence from the presiding judge's
computer, which Chevron asked a court to order, backfired. It actually
shows the company's claims that the plaintiff's lawyers bribed a judge
to "ghostwrite" the Ecuador verdict – are implausible and false.
Armed with this new evidence, the plaintiff's appeal of Chevron's RICO
case will be heard April 20th before the Second Circuit in New York. And
Canada's Supreme Court should be rendering its decision on the
communities' effort to seize Chevron's assets in a matter of weeks.
Shareholders should be asking some serious questions about the story
they've been told from Chevron senior management over the company's
legal and ethical conduct in the Ecuador trial, and the impending
liability that just won't go away.
While these videos can now not only be seen by the court of public
opinion, they could become evidence in other jurisdictions where the
communities have been forced to turn in efforts to seize Chevron's
assets as a way of forcing it to comply with the Ecuador judgment.
This is a good day for truth and a good day for justice.
Please share The Chevron Tapes far and wide, and continue to take action
to keep Chevron from getting away with the environmental crime of the
century.
As for the whistleblower who wondered whether the videos would be
helpful? We'd certainly say yes, indeed. Thank you, "friend from Chevron."
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